made of its own meat

Yesterday, quel jour! After getting embroiled in what I may concede was one long phone conversation too many (but is there any such thing?) I only got a pitiful hour and a half of sleep, and I woke up with an hour to go before I had to meet Noam at the Fontaine Saint-Michel. That may seem like plenty of time, but I spent most of it stumbling around aimless and disoriented, as I'd been roused by my alarm out of some pretty deep sleep and a really bizarre dream... something involving a huge waterslide shaped like a dragon. I tried to write down some of the details, but I was fuzzy and my scribbling is pretty much illegible. I do think I remember something about an Orthodox Jew reciting to me an old proverb that "a hot dog is made out of its own meat" (what?) and I think Rob Huff was there too. And maybe Mieka?

Anyway.

Somehow I managed to get myself out the door and to the Quartier Latin, except Noam had told me to get off at Odéon, which is not actually the closest stop to the fountain, so I had to find it, and for the first time the Parisians were living up to the stereotype about their attitude. After two unsavory responses to my inquiries about where it was, I gave up and just found it on my own.

There are a lot of saints hanging around in Paris, mostly attached to buildings. To be honest, after a while it can be hard to appreciate them as individuals, there are so many of them. But the Fontaine Saint-Michel is one of the more interesting things of its kind I've seen so far, mostly because the dragons are cool and the colored marble columns mix it up a little, and Saint Michael is standing on a piece of more natural-looking rock.

"Voilà, St. Michel," said Noam.

"Et qu'est-ce qu'il a fait?" I asked. What did he do? My knowledge of saints is scanty.

"Euuuhhh... il a tué le dragon," said Noam.

"Je pensais que c'était George qui a tué le dragon." I thought it was George who killed the dragon.

Noam shrugged. "Ils ont tous tué des choses." They all killed things. Good answer. "Tu as faim?"

I was indeed hungry, so I didn't bother pointing out that Saint Michael was clearly trampling Satan while the dragons watched placidly. Instead, we went to a good Lebanese restaurant.

Noam is essentially a random person whom I happened to meet three years ago and keep in contact with, so it's a nice coincidence that our interests are very parallel. We had a series of excellent conversations about literature (it's great), love (it's hard), learning (it's great, and hard) and many other more trivial things. He is very, very interested in American culture and wanted to know all about my Gwendolyn Brooks project, and was eager to make connections between my work and the things he knows about the sociology of the 60s. He took an American history class last year and I was pretty impressed with how much he knew; he'd also listened to a bunch of Malcolm X speeches and was very interested in the racial and social paradoxes of American history. It was compelling and jarring at the same time to hear someone with an outsider's perspective talk about our violent history and the beautiful futility of the American dream, with the combination of reverence and confusion with we approach subjects that seem simple but are terribly complex-- like children asking about death. Naiveté can lead equally and alternately to astuteness or falsehood, I guess.

Anyway, these conversations took us through lunch, then all around the Latin Quarter, where there is no shortage of stimuli if you like books or films... which I do! By the barrel. We went through the beautiful Marché aux Fleurs, and I saw some really cool plants. Like a dunce, I left the USB cord for my camera and its charger at home, so until Mieka brings them on Monday, you'll have to make do with my phone's camera.

In the back, you can spot Noam, on the phone with an ailing Clementine:

Agitated sea cucumber:

This one has pigtails:

This one is a dinosaur:

Then, delicious crêpes, more conversation, a little more walking around, and Noam left to go visit his girlfriend and bring her some stuff in her sickbed. She's starting school in Lyon soon so this is a sad time for them-- but! I couldn't let that get me down, because after he left I found this street where every store was comic-, anime-, or manga-related. Naturally, I let out a cry of joy, then fell to my knees, giving thanks to the heavens for this glorious bounty. Actually I only did one of those things but I'll let you guess which. Anyway, one of the stores had tons of awesome Death Note stuff, except like all nerd merchandise (nerdchandise? slap me) it was way overpriced. The coolest thing was probably a replica Death Note they had for sale, which had all of the names printed in it that Kira actually writes in the series, plus a bunch of blank pages for, um, your own use? But it was 28 euros, which is highway robbery! But I'll definitely be going back there, probably during the end of my trip when all the stuff-buying will take place. The people there were really friendly, and as always, I always got the special "wow, a girl just walked in!" nerd store reception.

Then I had the bright idea that I would walk home, but realized after I passed the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes (well hello, ostrich) that I was going horribly the wrong way, and as I had already gone quite far, I made myself feel better with a train ride back to Odéon, where I made a capital investment in a pair of boots (it was decided by my packing team that boots took up too much space to be worth packing) and a really awesome knit dress, then I headed home after a long day full of lots of exercise.

Then Colleen and Ryan showed up! And I didn't get to sleep until 2! Oh my.

Today was mostly unremarkable except that I helped them buy a map, and took a really nice shower, had a nice walk, enjoyed a very very sunny day, and looked at a great Andy Warhol book at my nearby Mona Lisait (it's a pun!) which sells discount art (and other) books which is GREAT because art books are mad expensive. My feelings on Andy Warhol have changed a lot over the years as my ideas of what art is have changed. I still enjoy him more as an endearing character than as an artist, but I really liked some of his drawings that were in this book, including a bunch of postcards he had drawn and sent to his mother from various places. Maybe I should draw my own postcards. If you saw Warhol's, you wouldn't doubt that I'd be able to do it.  ¶